Kerala Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan, who triggered a long overdue conversation online about colorism after facing the brunt of it, told NDTV today that she had deleted her post and then restored it after being asked to by a number of people. “It is high time we re-wrote what black means,” she said, “because unless we claim its beauty it will just be absence of colour,” she added. 

The Chief Secretary had posted her response after being at the receiving end of comments that juxtaposed her skin colour against her work to imply there was something wanting.

It was “interesting”, Ms Muraleedharan told NDTV. While she has been used to comments about her dark skin since a young age, and comparison of her tenure with that of her husband — former Kerala Chief Secretary V Venu. 

“It was interesting to see both of them brought together under one colour paradigm,” she told NDTV in an exclusive interview. 

The third dimension there, she added, was that of gender. In her post on Facebook, the 1990-batch IAS officer had said she heard a comment on her performance as Chief Secretary: “that it is as black as my husband’s was white”.

She said she had initially deleted her post because of the “overwhelming response”.

“But people called up to say as a Chief secretary what she said was important and brings out an issue that needs to be discussed,” she added. 

Ms Muraleedharan said the common perception about black was what she had absorbed — so much so that as a four-year-old, she had asked her mother to put her back in the womb and “bring me out again, all white and pretty”.

That perception changed only when she saw herself with the eyes of her grown up children. Today, she said, “I dig black”.

“Black is the all-pervasive truth of the universe. Black is that which can absorb anything, the most powerful pulse of energy known to humankind. It is the colour that works on everyone, the dress code for office, the lustre of evening wear, the essence of kajol, the promise of rain,” she wrote.